Why Software Cannot Just Evolve — a Demonstration

[hpcoder2]

Why Software Cannot Just Evolve — a Demonstration | Mind Matters[^] Featured in a recent CodeProject Daily news. What a lot of bollocks! It is well known from Steen Rasmussen's work in the 1980s that you cannot just evolve regular computer programs. It took a biologist, Tom Ray, who crossed in ALife to figure out that the instruction set needed to be be non-fragile - ie a cpu instruction should do something regardless of what input it gets. Later work showed that having a neutral mutation network is also important. Avida builds on Tom Ray's work, in quite specific ways. Richard Stevens use of Basic to try to rebut claims by the Avida team shows an alarming ignorance of basic facts that have been well-known in the ALife community for the last 3 decades. But then, this is a Discovery Institute sponsored piece, which has promotion of creationism as its goal, not truth.

[W Balboos GHB]

hpcoder2 wrote:

. But then, this is a Discovery Institute sponsored piece, which has promotion of creationism as its goal, not tru

Send them a link to CP featuring Bob - our beloved counterpoint to both evolution and creationism.

Ravings en masse^

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"If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010